Commuter rail plans in southeast Michigan are drawing fire from state legislators and other officials. The criticism stems from millions of dollars being spent on unused rail cars. Those rail cars await completion of projects between Ann Arbor and Detroit and between Ann Arbor and Howell. The Detroit Free Press, reporting on what it describes as “a $12-million debacle”, says the costs are to lease and refurbish 23 used rail cars MDOT acquired from a Chicago rail system.

What are the Lansing area’s future transportation needs? Three times this week, that’s been the topic of public forums in Ingham, Eaton and Clinton counties. The Tri County Regional Planning Commission is holding a fourth forum this evening in Lansing.

Just off the MSU campus, demolition crews are preparing to raze the first in a series of buildings to make way for a new multi-modal transportation center. The 40-year-old Amtrak depot will eventually come down and be replaced with a larger facility that can handle train, bus and even taxi traffic.

The ride-sharing service called Uber has been in the Lansing-East Lansing market for a couple of weeks now. Current State’s Scott Pohl took a ride with Uber driver Jeremy Kittle to learn about the new service from both the rider and the driver's point of view.

The state of Michigan’s roads has gotten a lot of attention lately, and if you drive or pay attention to the state legislature, you know why: our roads are just flat-out awful. But what about Michigan’s bridges? It turns out, many of those are in need of major repairs as well.

Listening to Michigan’s elected officials, it might be easy to assume that the only transportation issue facing the state is road funding. Indeed, there is agreement that road funding is particularly important, but it’s just one of several priorities for Trans4M, or "Transportation for Michigan".

Eight times a day, the Michigan Flyer bus departs downtown East Lansing with passengers en route to Ann Arbor and Detroit Metro Airport. The service, provided by the Owosso-based company Indian Trails, wants to expand to a dozen trips a day and looks to a $600,000 federal grant to make that possible.

WKAR’sPeter Whorf continues our series from the expo with a first look at a Michigan-made product. Gibbs Sports and Amphibians’ Graham Jenkins describes the new Quadski, a specialized craft that travels on land and water.

More than 400 Michigan farmers had a chance to meet with state legislators this week to talk about their priorities for 2013. The Michigan Farm Bureau has outlined three main focus areas for its agenda: access to markets, workforce development, and regulatory reform.